Nic Tutt is a good student. He excels at all subjects. But his education serves only one purpose—to gain entry into the Ransom School.

Ransom is the most prestigious school in the country. Its alumni are destined to become the future leaders of Ranvar. Politicians, statesmen and, in some exceptional cases, mages. Only the brightest and the best get into Ransom.

But Nic doesn't care about any of that. He isn't determined to get into Ransom to further his prospects or better his career opportunities. He has another reason to want to enter Ranvar's most famous school.

Phenomenal Writing

MC of this story is pretty similar to the one in another work by the same author, minus the cynicism. If you are familiar with the author and don't like his other pieces, don't let it dissuade you from reading this one. This is a planned story and it shows in both the pacing and the quality. Here are some reasons why you should give this story a shot.

1. Beautfiful Prose. It's difficult to describe in a short paragraph just how good the writing is in this story, easily on par with major published works. The author is obviously well practiced in the tools of his trade.

2. Stellar world building. You won't find any info dump chapters in this story. Lore and information about the setting are revealed gradually and meshed naturally with the plot.

3. Consistent characters with relateable motivations in a believable universe. Secretly OP broody MC that reveals his powers to put the beatdown on TOTAL JERKS (TM) while chicks fall all over him? None of that here. Another cheap plot hook I see in these types of stories is authors having the story *** on their characters for the sake of cheap drama. Orphan who had his entire village slaughtered by evil overlord? *yawn*. This story completely avoids this trope. MC has a fairly stable home life, the lords of the land aren't raging assholes (any more than you'd expect), and society allows for some merit based upward mobility in a pseudo-feudal system.

4. Natural and well paced progression. What do I mean by this? One of the major hooks in this story is the "magic" system. So far the reader only has enough information to make inferences, but it seems like it building up to be something science based. While birth is one way to access it, the "mages" in this story seem to be selected by academic ability. Our MC isn't slinging fireballs straight out of the prologue and there is every indication that he will have to earn his way through the plot. No mysterious old man with cheat training, no heavenly fruits, no genetic lottery, no xian xia bullshit(cultivation is a plague on fiction. BATTLE GOD ULTIMATE DRAGON JOHN CENA), just a normal base human with brains and a good work ethic.

5. Well excectuted ?sort-of-romance? I cannot begin to describe how tired I am of cringy, self-aggrandizing MC/pseudo SI's who think they are god's gift to women spouting their juvenile insecurities and obviously incomplete understanding of basic human nature. Just when I was about to abandon all hope and fling my keyboard through the window, Mooderino arrived to save the day with his beautiful story. Again, I will fall back to point #3, every interaction in this story is, above all else, BELIEVABLE and CONSISTENT with the characters and backgrounds.

I can go on and on about how great the execution of this story is and how many greating writing techniques the author is using, but I'll stop here. If you are looking for curbstomp MC's with the depth of a puddle on a sunny day plowing his way through a cardboard setting, then there are hundreds of other "works" on this site. If you want excellent prose, beautiful world building, and well developed characters, you won't regret reading this story.

edit: my saltiness at some of the stuff I have been reading has reached critical levels and erupted all over this review. That aside, read this story, seriously. This is the gem that makes trawling through all the garbage worth it.

Depressing fall from great potential to abject disappointment, esp. the author

This is one of those stories that start explosively with all the ingredients for greatness, crafted with details that make it attractive to a wide audience: teasing bits of what promised to be expansive worldbuilding, fun dialogue, a modest protagonist striving to do his best in fresh situations, and unrequited love? What's not to love. The only two minor complaints I had at the start were the one dimensionality of the Ransom students (entitled brats one and all?) and the limp, doormatty passivity of the protagonist.

However, the real test is whether characters and their choices stand the test of time. It's extremely difficult to maintain a plot trajectory that pieces together a coherent, interesting narrative given a cast of characters with distinctly different agendas (think about the scene where Nic goes "Miss Delcroix" - sublime). However, in recent chapters, many characters and events have lost this sense of continuity and spontaneity where you internally go "wow! that's so unexpected but I can see how things built up to this" or "huh, I really want to see how their dialogue here affects things later."

I won't bother with every case so I'll focus on one: the inconsistency with Dizzy's dynamic with Nic. One chapter, she suddenly decides to visit bedridden Nic, presumably throughout the night (besides why? this scene was a major anticlimax, regrettably removing a lot of the mystery and anticipation that was previously instilled in readers wondering how they'd reunite-and hey look Simole found out again). Then the next chapter, she's cold with him and Nic's response suggests he mysteriously had rapid short term memory loss of her visit and warmth the night before. A bit later you have Nic's outburst which is uncharacteristic of his portrayal so far and needlessly melodramatic. Characters are acting unnaturally, mostly because there's insufficient development and fleshing out to adapt these rapid jumps and partly because the pacing is much faster in the past few chapters.

But that is not an appropriate reason for the 1/2 star review and never should be. It's quite likely mooderino will recover because he's an excellent writer. No, he lost a reader and loyal voter today because of his contemptuous treatment of my critical comments, going so far as to censor/delete them because he saw it as "rude and hostile." I leave my comments below because there's no freedom in the comment section. I believe everything was constructively oriented, but I may be biased so I leave them here for posterity. I only have one excerpt from mooderino's 1st reply.

MOODERINO'S REPLY #1:

It's jarring because it wasn't mentioned before. It was mentioned before. Oh yes, but still, it's jarring because I don't think he would have mentioned it.!!!!!?????

I know when you have a feeling something's off it's hard to change it retrospectively, but you made the mistake, not me. When that happens so clearly, it's churlish to go 'okay, but still...' and exasperating to deal with even if you're trying to be genuine in your criticism.

CENSORED COMMENT #1 TO ABOVE:

If it's a spoiler thing, then okay. But the way Nic's reticence in the previous chapter was written did not read in any way as purposeful misleading. That's what I wanted to point out. He could definitely feel guilty about not sharing everything when he had the chance, but as I said above, there's not much basis for feeling so guilty for not sharing all his vague suspicions when he had no reason to suspect his friends were relevant to his 'accident'.

I don't think any of my points are just a matter of taste. I'm only pointing out any little details that potentially break the story's consistency or fluidity.

Also, I didn't say I don't like the jokes; they're quite funny in the right situation. I was just remarking that upping its frequency may reduce its kick.

On point 2, that's valid. Regardless, it still presupposes their ability to read through a *roomful* of books posthaste and find the needle. It's possible but it's nearing one extreme of suspension of disbelief.

On point 5, your sarcasm notwithstanding, I'm not being churlish: the point still stands. As I said above, it's a very sudden jump from telling about their history to Nic sharing his deepest desires that even he's barely aware of. For the reader who isn't aware of what exactly "history" entails, it's a disorienting jump from Nic's friendship with Dizzy to Nic sharing that he's in love with Dizzy. Again, I expect Davo is good at reading into these situations, but there's a missing link in the causal chain from a storytelling POV. It's not about what I think or what you think. The context of a criticism changing does not suddenly make it invalid.

I know you must deal with entitled critics all the time, but there's no need to be patronizing. Everything I've written, I've given tenable support for.

CENSORED COMMENT #2:

That's because they were good points that you didn't address (the only thing you directly addressed was Nic's ambitious plan) and instead chose to disparage without expending the same effort to explain or refute.

I only agreed with one of your points, and partially at that. I don't know about you, but I've found it is quite normal to partially agree but still find faults in something.

And oh yes, I can tell you think it's all incredibly obnoxious. But I'm not here to criticize for criticism's sake or even being pushy. These are just the type of things that any professional editor will bother to point out (I know because I've been there) because an author usually can't maintain the same distance to spot. I only bothered with this at all because I think the story's been great and I only wanted to see it excel.

If you don't want to see these types of comments, then just leave a note on the bottom of each chapter to the effect of "I know best, don't question me."

CENSORED COMMENT #3:

I can see how tiring it must be to respond to all these walls of text and acknowledge that it's not feasible to address everything. But I hope you recognize that when people bring up the same points, it's not a coincidence, but a pattern.

For instance, it's not always about answers coming in the forseeable future, but how the build-up to those answers are qualified in the present.

Overall, there was a clear decline in quality in this chapter and readers like Sir Fury and I just wrote to let you know. Though if you don't read it (especially when it's well formulated), you can't be snooty about it *taps finger to temple*.

Fatally Flawed

The good student is fairly well written and suffers from few grammar problems. The world is interesting and fairly well built. Some areas are professional level quality, and yet there is a fatal flaw, the main character.

Nic Tutt is just not interesting or even likable, despite all he has going for him. He is smart, competent and in some cases funny, yet he has no ambition. Zero. Nothing. He just wants a good education and maybe his childhood friend. He has no interest in becoming a mage, he has no real interest in anything really except stalking his childhood friend. I've managed to slog through all eighteen chapters out currently, hoping something would finally spur him into action. Finally in the last chapter something interesting has happened, yet it's too little too late. I look back and wonder how so little could happen in 287 pages, the length of an average novel. At this rate it'll take five novels to get through an entire two years at school. Then comes the royal college and even more stuff. Worse yet I don't even know what a mage can even do, or how you become one.

A boring character with no real goal or ambition, that leads to him doing nothing interesting, interesting stuff only happening to him. Your writing has improved since your last story but you really, really need to work on your characters and plot. That's whats holding you back. I probably won't read more but I look forward to your next story, to see if you can improve this aspect. Good luck.

Hard to Tell

I am two chapters in and am unfortunately hooked on a once a week upload speed. The MC is a bit of a mystery, but it is great to see that he isn't just jumping into cultivation or some garbadge. Tons of attention to detail too. Here's to hoping for 2 releases a week!

A BIG improvement over his last (published) story

Great to binge read, the early story rockets along. An interesting main character, and substantial problems/mysteries that have to be overcome while the world building is fleshed out. All in a harry potteresque magic academy. If i had to give a score for the early story - pre chapter 30 - it'd be 4 out of 5. Worthy to be published material.

That being said, now the story is starting to run into problems. The first main confrontation is over, with an ambiguous ending: Think of it as book 1 ending, and book 2 beginning. Only, looks like book 2 is going to be a continuation of the same storyline.

... and frankly, that's a problem.

The main character has lost the mystery/goal that was driving the plot foward, and now we're getting slice of life chapters as they wait for the inevitable plot progression from the fallout. I hate to say it, but it's not very interesting. We needed some additional plot point to drive the story. A rival school, finding a fairy in the back garden, a spreading black ring from the site of the confrontation. A mystery, or an interesting tidbit to open up the world, or drive the character to other destinations.

SPOILER

Just seems like the story is going to trickle out to the demon realm, which hasn't been interesting to date, with the few side character trips to it. And the main character is starting to grate a bit now that he IS the top dog in school. With flippant thoughts about how he isn't even bothering to correct the teacher in class, to show how speshal he is.

Without persecution, and when he's top dog he's kind of a dick.

Early story was so good that it'd be a real shame, if this work kind of slouched it's way to the same fanfic quality of his other published work. At the moment the only standout character is the librarian, who I'm not even sure if she has a name? The friends group kind of just blend together. I tried keeping track of them and had no luck.

Doesn't help that the other potentially interesting character is absent from the main group for story purposes.

Something DIFFERENT

A good student. Five chapters in and I'm already hooked. The author's other stories are really good and I recommend you try them if you're fine with a story SANS OP. But this one I'm afraid is something I beg you to try. As long as you can get past the LACK of ooh's and wow's magic and action, I believe you will find it a good snack you won't regret trying. This story gave me what I missed in stories since a long time, the feeling I used to get before sci-fi,fantasy or lit-rpg were a-thing(I love these genres mind you) thank you mooderino. (P.S. I might have become a little emo and inflated this story a little too much(?) But its my honest feelings and I want to see this story reach the top.

This one needs to be published.

The characters are intriguing; the world-building is immersive and free of heavy-handed exposition dumps; and the humor is refreshingly subtle. Arguably the most polished work I've read in RR. Keep churning out dem chapters.

A torture session

This is no normal fiction.. It is a trap devised by quite the devious author.. 7 chapters and i am craving more.. But no, the updates are weekly!

Oh the humanity!

(*snicker*)

Seriously tho even with such a small sample size one can see that the author knows what he is doing.

Characters: the Mc seems like s simple guy and mostly goes with the flow. Nonetheless he enjoys being a stick in the mud to those who seek to limit him.. His goals seem to centre around his childhood friend and his attempfts to follow her to places higher than his original social position.

The side characters are colorful although not too develloped yet. A good thing to note is that unlicke other fics they are not an ironic or unironic collection of tropes but their own person.

World: a standard fantasy-esque world that seems more advances than your mill of the run medieval fantasy. Since so far the fiction is limited to school life it is hard to know more besides what our mc learns from books and decides to divulge.

Grammar: honestly 0 issues a job well done

Personnal opinion(i know a review is personnal get off my back :p): A school life fiction done right. So far i have found no glaring cliches(again used ironically or unnironically) and the characters are perfect despite their sometimes extreme maturity. Definately favored and reccomended to my reading buddies!(not you guys, my actual buddies.. Altho i guess you can join us aswell )

Tl;DR: Great Story

This story is Great, there is nothing bad to say on it and just one advice.

The character have flesh, they feel human, a good chararcter is exactly how the author want (can be annoying or cool but it all being under the author will) and even if we have yet to see any "main antagonist", we can see the MC having difficulty with some other character but not instantly becoming their mortal ennemy.

I was honestly impressed by the style, the story suck you in and only let you go once you finished all available chapter, also theGrammar is perfect, by that i mean that any mistake that may exist do not bother the experience of reading this marvel.

In this story one of the other point that got me extremely interested is how deep the history of the world presented by the author is, it may not seem impressive but everything in the story is possible and logical.

First The father of Dizzy do not help the MC for nonsensical reasons but for logical reasons, also leaving the ability to join the noble rank for the lower class even during peaceful time while also suppressing them in those establishment lessen the tension between social classes but keep the "Newcomers" in low number.

Secondly the tactics explained are also possible and even clever, those are (at least in my country) not the first tactics everyone would think of, allying with someone to betray them after is classic but the precision on how they did it are interesting and original.

all of this to say this story is above a lot of those present on this website

i'm sad that english not being my maternal language i somhow lack the ability to truly express how impressed i was by this story.

also i want to bring to attention that this was written after only six chapter, but in those chapterthere was more content than what some stories can bring in fourty.

finaly i want to advise the author not to hurry, a part of what i loved in the story was The background of the world, there is indeed not fantasy element for the moments but that doesn't change the skill of the writter, and even if once a week can seem long for some, its not a reasons to hurry the plot and drop the quality

and for the reader, once a week is not that long, when one have a job and a life. writing can take a long time and hurrying the author won't help.

(also the half stars lacking are just because Perfection is impossible, so even if all the comment are positive one should always try to improve himself

As of chapter 3.

Hi there, it's a bit early to write a proper review but i will come back for that when more chapters are out.

As it is now i think this story has quite a bit of potential: the grammar is, i would say, almost perfect ( i am italian though). The writing style is good, not too paced with the right stops at the right times and as for the plot i am liking it a lot, the politicians game played on the students is really intresting. I also like (for what little we know till now) how the world is written so far. Tha main character is also very well flashed out and we can start to get glimpses of the important side-characters as well.

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